Open letter to Ontario Premier Dalton McGuinty:I attended a meeting Monday called by the Thunder Bay and District Injured Workers’ Support Group to discuss the KPMG report on the Workplace Safety and Insurance Board and came away with a very heavy heart.It is one thing to have a partisan disagreement with the government of the day; it is quite another to be appalled by the inhumanity of that government in its treatment of citizens unfortunate enough to be injured on the job.When Conservative Premier Mike Harris cut premiums for the Workers Compensation Board by 30 per cent, he was obviously pandering to his business friends and corporate supporters.When you responded to the inevitable result — a growing deficiency in the fund that pays for benefits to workers injured in the workplace — by looking for ways to reduce these benefits, you were continuing the Conservative policy.To give an Order-in-Council appointment to someone prepared to reduce benefits, regardless of the rights the injured have in law, is outrageous.To promise a bonus to the president of the Workplace Safety and Insurance Board if he makes the funding shortfall good without raising premiums is monstrous.From the time you signed the Taxpayers Federation pledge not to raise taxes before the 2003 election, I saw your party, and any government you might form, as Blue Lite. That seems far too generous a reading when I contemplate what you are doing to injured workers these days.Truly not yours,Ernie EppThunder Bay

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"Democracy is not the law of the majority, it's the protection of the minority." -Albert Camus 1913-1960

Why my great-grandfathers (both war heros) taught me to never respect the military, to never give up my life for any leader any time any where, they are simply never worth it.

There is a new urgency to solve the issue quickly as troops settle back home after missions in Afghanistan. National Defence statistics released this month found that 2,000 soldiers were injured during the country’s 10-year combat mission in Afghanistan, but that does not include the thousands of soldiers impacted by post-traumatic stress syndrome and other mental-health issues.

The report recommends that reasons for all disability coverage decisions should be written in plain language, with a clear explanation of how the individual assessment was made. Each letter should also include a notice of the right to appeal.

“It troubles me to think that many Veterans may be wrongly assessed and do not pursue the matter further because [their] letter did not reveal where the department’s decision was flawed,” Mr. Parent wrote in the report.

International Workers' Memorial Day, 28 April, is especially poignant this year with perhaps the worst industrial "accident" aka mass murder of workers in the history of the garment industry, near Dhaka, Bangladesh. Death toll already up to almost 300, with hundreds of workers still missing. And police firing rubber bullets at the protesting workers and families...

Of course the Rana Plaza disaster is the starkest Workers' Memorial Day story this year, but there are still many problems in terms of both occupational health and safety and justice for injured workers and the families of workers killed on the job, right here.

A good article on the situation here in Québec from Janet Bagnall of the Montreal Gazette (which has a limit on free stories per month):